Excel users are often faced with spreadsheets that summarize sales data for multiple areas, such as states within the U.S. or individual countries.

Functions such as SUM or AVERAGE let you summarize your data as a whole—but it can be difficult to find the totals, averages, or counts for subsets of that data. For example, suppose you want to find the total of all sales to Canada. To do that using a standard SUM formula, you would have to identify cells that contain values for all sales to Canada and then create a formula for just those cells.

Fortunately, there’s a set of conditional functions in Excel that let you specify which values should be included in a sum, average, or count calculation. Those functions are: SUMIF, SUMIFS, AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS, COUNTIF, and COUNTIFS.

Setting up worksheets often means entering long strings of data, such as row numbers or dates, to create a framework for your data. This work can be repetitive and boring. What’s worse, it takes time away from analysis.

Let me show you how to make it go faster—with Excel Flash Fill, fill handle, and more.

Ever accidentally leave tracked changes in your Microsoft Word document for all the world to see?

I’m going to show you how visible changes in a Word document recently got a political leader in trouble—and how you can use Word’s Document Inspector to avoid making those same embarrassing mistakes in your own docs.

Business users of Microsoft Excel take advantage of many of the program’s built-in functions. One of the most popular tools is the VLOOKUP function, which lets you search an Excel worksheet as if it were a database table.

Excel is a powerful and versatile tool you can use to analyze data—but not every capability you might want is built in.

Using the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language, you can script custom processes in Excel. VBA is an object-oriented language, which means that elements of Excel—such as workbooks, worksheets, and the program itself—are represented as objects. An object has three main components:

When Curt Frye started working with lynda.com, we were all very excited about the slew of new and much needed Microsoft Excel courses he was planning for us. With the state of the economy, and more people doing their own finances, as well as tightening their belts nearly to the point of of asphyxiation, it is becoming more critical for the general public to understand their finances, even on a very basic level.

In the November 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, The Forethought column “Teach Workers About the Perils of Debt.” states:

“It’s widely known that many consumers have poor numeracy–they can’t figure out percentages or do other elementary calculations–and have barely a rudimentary grasp of economics. In our research, we looked deeper, studying consumers’ ‘debt literacy,’ the ability to understand how interest rates work and make simple decisions about borrowing. We found it to be strikingly low.”

Curt's aim in creating a course on financial analysis was to teach skills required to analyze debt. Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, image #3154423

“My aim in creating Excel 2007: Financial Analysis was to teach the skills required to analyze debt,” said Curt Frye of his first lynda.com course. “I’m hoping that it helps subscribers better understand some critical skills that not everyone is taught at home or in school.”

Curt is currently working on a new book, as well as new lynda.com courses. For a full list of his training, visit his author page.